1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus, a control method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
When printing on a printing medium such as roll paper, it is necessary to cut the printing medium. There is known a printing apparatus including a cutter which cuts a printing medium. On the other hand, if the cutting position of a printing medium shifts, even a small shift may raise a problem. For example, such problems arise, for example, when high accuracy is required as in the case of drawings and when printing media on which images are printed by a plurality of printing apparatuses are bound into a book. More specifically, when the respective pages have different lengths, even if the leading ends of the pages are aligned, the trailing ends are misaligned. Printing all the pages of a booklet by using one printing apparatus can suppress the pages from having different lengths. However, this book differs in length from that formed by another printing apparatus. A cutting position shift is caused by factors such as an error in the conveyance amount of a printing medium and a mounting error of a cutter with respect to the printing apparatus.
As a method of eliminating cutting position shifts, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-254756 has proposed a technique of correcting the conveyance amount of a printing medium in accordance with use conditions for a printing apparatus. Japanese Patent No. 4193026 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-231315 have proposed a technique of printing a pattern for cutting position verification on a printing medium, cutting the printing medium over the pattern, and setting a correction amount for a conveyance amount based on the cutting position and the pattern.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-254756 is designed to reduce an error in the conveyance amount of a printing medium but gives no consideration to a cutting position shift caused by a structural error such as a mounting error of a cutter with respect to a printing apparatus. The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4193026 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-231315 is designed to cut a printing medium after a pattern is printed and the printing medium is conveyed by a predetermined amount. An error can also occur in the conveyance amount of a printing medium. It is therefore not possible to determine whether a pattern cutting position shift is caused by either or both of a structural error and a conveyance error. Since a conveyance error varies, even correcting the conveyance amount by the correction amount obtained from a pattern cutting position sometimes results in a cutting position shift.